“The NHS is dying before our eyes.” So said Dr Iain Kennedy, chair of the doctors’ trade union, the BMA, earlier this week, in response to an opinion poll commissioned by the union through the highly respected Diffley Partnership, which revealed that nearly one-third of Scots or a member of their household had used private health care in the previous two years. Of those who had, almost two-thirds cited the NHS’s long waiting lists as the reason for making the choice to go private.

In all, not far off half of those polled said they would be more likely to use a private option in future.

Dr Kennedy’s reaction is accurate, almost certainly – the NHS as we know it is indeed dying before our eyes. His reaction is also instinctively negative and extremely common. Patients are sick of waiting, ergo patients are abandoning the NHS, ergo the NHS will die.

Far less common, but no less worth considering, is whether this is, in fact, good news for the future provision of universal taxpayer-funded healthcare.

Read more by Andy Maciver

I find our moral framing both fascinating and entirely out of kilter with the moral framing of healthcare choices in other countries.

Using private healthcare in this country is seen as an act of selfishness. A grotesque display of privilege. Two fingers to the little people waiting in the queue. Immoral and un-Scottish.

We don’t have to travel far, though, to find countries whose moral framing is entirely different. Far from causing moral panic, using private health care in other countries is seen as an act of moral propriety. A display not of........

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